Gah. That's got to be so hard to see. Good on you for trying, bootz. I had a friend who was well over 400lbs, and decided to get that shit sorted out. So he met with a doctor, and got some super basic education on calories. That's when he realized that a single Big Mac meal has half of the calories he needs a day. And he was getting two or three at a time. For lunch. He started changing his diet too late. Died that year from basically an over-taxed system. So if you get through to anyone on your lacrosse team, you have done good. I can imagine your team running sprints for 20 minutes, out of breath, asking to stop, and you say, "Nope. You've only worked off the first three bites of that Big Mac so far. You have 4 more hours of running. Now GO!"
Yea, people don't realize how calorically dense our foods are. And furthermore fail to grasp how efficient our bodies are at retaining those calories. I've heard that to burn off the calories of a peanut M&M (about 5 or 6 calories) you'd have to full-out sprint the length of two football fields.
I've been counting calories recently. I even bought a kitchen scale so I could reduce inaccuracy in my estimates (there's still some when eating out). The calories in just a little cheese were crazy. So I replaced it with avocado. I cut the calories in half and add more real food to my diet. I do think it's taken me fifteen years to figure out proper nutrition. You'll get through to a couple students, and a couple more will remember it later. You're doing good!
Thank you! And being versed in nutrition as a science seems like it could take a lifetime. But there is a Michael Pollan quote that's coming to me. Here he is discussing his reasons why he wrote (another) book, this time not on the ethics of our food chain but on personal nutritional decisions: Fair questions, though it does seem to me a symptom of our present confusion about food that people would feel the need to consult a journalist, or for that matter a nutritionist or doctor or government food pyramid, on so basic a question about the conduct of our everyday lives as humans. I mean, what other animal needs professional help in deciding what it should eat? True, as omnivores—creatures that can eat just about anything nature has to offer and that in fact need to eat a wide variety of different things in order to be healthy—the "What to eat” question is somewhat more complicated for us than it is for, say, cows.Yet for most of human history, humans have navigated the question without expert advice.To guide us we had, instead, Culture, which, at least when it comes to food, is really just a fancy word for your mother. What to eat, how much of it to eat, what order in which to eat it, with what and when and with whom have for most of human history been a set of questions long settled and passed down from parents to children without a lot of controversy or fuss.But many readers wanted to know, after they’d spent a few hundred pages following me following the food chains that feed us, “Okay, but what should I eat? And now that you’ve been to the feedlots, the food-processing plants, the organic factory farms, and the local farms and ranches, what do you eat?”
You're spot on about certain dressings totally annihilating any caloric deficit you're trying to run. And portion sizes are another thing -- family sized bags are just a trap to have in the house. Even large containers of healthier foods like nuts I get into trouble with. Our brains aren't geared for abstaining from food that's around us and immediately available, especially food that's salty or oily or sweet. It can definitely be that. But you're pointing her to a nutritionist? That's pretty suggestive itself lol.It's a touchy subject though, so I'm pointing her towards a nutritionist and they can be the messenger.
Damn. I knew Coca Cola was bad, but not that bad. Comparisons of familiar things are so so much more compelling than statistics. In school we were told that "one bottle of Coca Cola equals so many table spoons of sugar", but since we didn't have a good intuition as to how much sugar was acceptable, it didn't stick. I can't even remember how many table spoons it was! Junk food is terrifying because it's so easy to consume without thinking. Sure, it's also easy to mindlessly eat healthy food, but I've never eaten an entire fried chicken's worth of carrot sticks.
I had to see the statistics behind this. Not that I'm defending soda drinking - I'm just curious. My quick math from a nearby coke can tells me 140 cal per 12oz - that's 11.6 calories per oz., making a 64 oz BigGulp weigh in at 747 Calories. According to this, ONE pound of breaded, fried chicken is 506 calories. So maybe an entire chicken has a little more meat than a pound? I dunno - I actually don't love fried chicken... but I do know that a pound of it is more than I would ever want to eat. And the fact that a pound of it is LESS calories than a leg spreader Big Gulp (which I have had) is frightening. Thanks for the eye-opening reminder to cut the soda.
So, back to reality: http://www.livestrong.com/article/544545-nutrition-in-half-of-a-roasted-chicken/ That's a roasted chicken, not a fried chicken. It's also half a chicken. When I go here, A breast, a thigh, a leg and a wing come in at 970 calories. So I'm not sure how Livestrong is cooking their chicken if they come in a hundred calories hotter than KFC but there it is. Coca Cola agrees with you - 12 calories per oz. 765 calories in a 64 oz big gulp. Or, about a wing shy of half a fried chicken. So HEEUGE SURPRISE, the shock jock was exaggerating. BUT it sure switched me over to diet, I tell you what. And then I had some liver tests done and that effectively got me off cola. PROTIP: sodastream. Skip the syrups and just make yourself sparkling water. I drink that shit all day long and a $15 charger lasts me two months.After removing the bone, a half of a roasted chicken weighs 480 grams, or 17 ounces. It has 1,070 calories, 115 grams of protein, 64 grams of fat and 0 grams of carbohydrates.
I think that is how my mother in law describes me to her friends. So yah... The sodas... I don't drink much anymore. It's just not worth it. I have a mexicoke every couple days. I consider it my beer. I'll occasionally get a huge fountain drink when I'm driving for 5+ hours. But even then, tried little crystal light with caffeine packs are way more effective than the gut wrenching soda bomb. Even if the shock jock overestimated - who cares. It's a great way to think concretely about soda consumption.about a wing shy of half a fried chicken
If I had to guess I'd say it might be because KFC chickens tend to be on the small side anyway, and they don't include the full half-breast in their breast pieces (they get three pieces from the breast instead of two); but still seems hard to fathom (re: deep-fried vs roasted).I'm not sure how Livestrong is cooking their chicken if they come in a hundred calories hotter than KFC but there it is.